Heaven is a place where you get to listen to amazing music on an amazing pair of headphones. Currently, my little slice of heaven is blasting this gorgeous piece of yellow wax on my Grado headphones. Headphone heaven courtesy of our friends at Medical Records: Novels For The Moons by Axxess. Originally released in 1983, Axxess is the brainchild of French multimedia artist Patrick Mimran who was co-director of Lamborghini Motors (along with his brother) at the time and fittingly released the album on the imprint Lamborghini Records. Yes that’s right, LAMBORGHINI RECORDS. Every boy in the 80s had a poster (purchased at the school’s Book Fair) on his bedroom wall of some neon yellow Lambo speeding through the Italian country side. Oh what speed demon dreams! Anyway, this clearly was the music that the driver in said poster was listening to. A sort of nonchalant ostentatiousness, refined, sleek, dangerous yet controlled, and an unflinching stare into the face of 80s modernity. Oh yeah, and there are some rad snare sounds too.

So the story goes Mimran was deep into the likes of Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, and Kraftwerk and figured if he can oversee the building of an über-luxury sports car, which not a complex custom built synthesizer? So Mimran commissioned the German engineer Andreas Bahrdt to build his sonic spaceship, a 16-voice analog synthesizer named “La Bart.” The music is pretty consistently upbeat with a forward pulpusion driving vibe. Kick and snare anchor the center sonic field like a stretch of black top while synth lines bounce from left to right in your peripheral “vision” like trees at 140 mph. Like I said, great headphone record.

Out of print and a top dollar collector’s item for years, Medical has finally righted this wrong. The LP features original reproduction sleeve art (front and back) featuring the mysterious and eye-dazzling original painting that donned the original LP. Included is a 2-sided insert featuring an interview and profile of Axxess by Dave Segal (who also wrote notes for our upcoming Donnie and Joe Emerson Dreamin’ Wild release) and color photos of the infamous “Le Bart” synth used to create this masterpiece. This will certainly appeal to fans of early progressive synth records, sequencer-heavy Tangerine Dream period, cosmic disco, and other lovers of all things early-electronic. Limited to 1,000 hand-numbered copies, this thing will be gone fast. Pick a copy up here.